Church leaders were washing the feet of selected priests in ceremonies on Holy Thursday. Pope Benedict didn't specifically mention the church abuse scandal, but did say that Catholics are called to "a constant examination of conscience."

VATICAN CITY (AP)  Pope Benedict XVI said Catholics are called to a "constant examination of conscience" but made no mention of the scandals rocking his church before he washed the feet of 12 priests in a ceremony marking Holy Thursday.

The pontiff is celebrating Holy Week — the most solemn period in the Roman Catholic calendar — as allegations that the church covered up clerical sex abuse spread across Europe, including his native Germany, and the United States.

The feet-washing ceremony in St. John Lateran Basilica in Rome symbolizes humility and commemorates Jesus' last supper with his 12 apostles on the evening before his crucifixion.

Wearing a white apron, Benedict poured water from a golden pitcher over one bare foot of each of the priests, who were seated in a row. With the water dripping on a golden basin, the pope dried the feet with a white cloth.

The pope did not directly address the scandals during the Mass that included the feet-washing ritual. He said that Jesus, in his prayer after washing the feet of the apostles, "challenges us to a constant examination of conscience."

"At this hour the Lord is asking us: are you living, through faith, in fellowship with me and thus in fellowship with God?" the pope said. "Or are you rather living for yourself, and thus apart from faith?"

"As we meditate on the Passion of the Lord, let us also feel Jesus' pain at the way that we contradict his prayer, that we resist his love," Benedict added.

The pope has several appearances until Easter Sunday, when the faithful celebrate Jesus' resurrection. He will preside over the Way of the Cross procession at the Colosseum on Good Friday — commemorating Jesus' suffering in the hours before his crucifixion — and then celebrate a late-night Easter Vigil on Saturday.

In a Mass in St. Peter's Basilica earlier Thursday, the pope had urged priests to be "men of peace" and oppose violence. The Mass was described by the Vatican as a sign of strict union between the pontiff in his role of pastor of the world's 1 billion Catholics and his fellow priests.

The sex abuse scandal comes atop of years of allegations and court cases involving clergy abuse in schools, seminaries and other church institutions from Australia to Canada. Benedict himself has come under fire for his handling of clergy abuse cases during his tenure as archbishop of Munich and as head of the Vatican office dealing with disciplining priests.

Victims are demanding that the pope take responsibility for what they say were decades of systematic cover-ups by church hierarchy of clergy abuse. Church officials insist Benedict has cracked down on sex abuse both as pontiff and in his tenure as a top Vatican cardinal.

Cardinals rushed to Benedict XVI's defense on Holy Thursday, as an increasingly angry Vatican made a stinging attack on the U.S. media for its coverage.

The relationship between the church and the media has become increasingly bitter as the scandal buffeting the 1 billion-member church has touched the pontiff himself. On Wednesday, the church singled out the New York Times for criticism in an unusually harsh attack.

Western news organizations, including The Associated Press, have reported extensively on the burgeoning scandal, and new revelations have emerged on an almost daily basis.

Venice's Cardinal Angelo Scola expressed solidarity with Benedict in his Holy Thursday homily in the lagoon city, describing him as a victim of "deceitful accusations." He praised the pope as seeking to remove all "dirt" from the priesthood.

Warsaw Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz said the church should take notice of individual tragedies and treat sex abuse cases very seriously, but at the same time he criticized the media for "targeting the whole church, targeting the pope, and to that we must say 'no' in the name of truth and in the name of justice."

And Vienna's Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, speaking of Benedict's long years as head of a Vatican office that investigates abuse, said the future pope "had a very clear line of not covering up but clearing up."

He earlier reflected on the issue at a service in Vienna's cathedral Wednesday evening:

"I admit that I often feel a sense of injustice these days. Why is the church being excoriated? Isn't there also abuse elsewhere? ... And then I'm tempted to say: Yes, the media just don't like the church! Maybe there's even a conspiracy against the church? But then I feel in my heart that no, that's not it."

The church on Wednesday presented its highest-level official response yet to one of the most explosive recent revelations regarding sex abuse — a story the Times broke on the church's decision in the 1990s not to defrock a Wisconsin priest accused of molesting deaf boys.

It was the latest in a series of attacks on the press: Last week, L'Osservatore Romano, denounced what it said was a "clear and despicable intention" by the media to strike at Benedict "at any cost."

In the article posted Wednesday on the Vatican's website, Cardinal William Levada, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote: "I am not proud of America's newspaper of record, the New York Times, as a paragon of fairness."

Levada, an American, said the newspaper wrongly used the case of the Rev. Lawrence Murphy to find fault in Benedict's handling of abuse cases.

A Times spokeswoman defended the articles and said no one has cast doubt on the reported facts.

"The allegations of abuse within the Catholic church are a serious subject, as the Vatican has acknowledged on many occasions," said Diane McNulty. "Any role the current pope may have played in responding to those allegations over the years is a significant aspect of this story."

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